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[4573] disagreed with me. [4574] I if I once made up my mind not to keep the hangman waiting the bloody flux itself would not stop me, I would get there on all fours shitting out my entrails and chanting maledictions. [4575] Didn't I tell you it's my brethren that have done for me.
[4576] But I shall not dwell upon this journey home, its furies and treacheries.
[4577] And I shall pass over in silence the fiends in human shape and the phantoms of the dead that tried to prevent me from going getting home, in obedience to Youdi's command.
[4578] But one or two words nevertheless, for my own edification and to prepare my soul to make an end.
[4579] To begin with my rare thoughts.
[4580] Certain questions of a theological nature preoccupied me strangely. [4581] As for example.
[4582] 1. What value is to be attached to the theory that Eve sprang, not from Adam's rib, but from a tumour in the fat of his leg (arse?)?
[4583] 2. Did the serpent crawl or, as Comestor affirms, walk upright?
[4584] 3. Did Mary conceive through the ear, as Augustine and Adobard assert?
[4585] 4. How much longer are we to hang about waiting for [⁁]the anteiichrist?
[4586] 5. Does it really matter which hand is employed to absterge the podex?
[4587] 6. What is one to think of the Irish oeath sworn by the natives with the right hand on the relics of the saints and the left on the virile member?
[4588] 7. Does nature observe the sabbath?
[4589] 8. Is it true that the devils do not feel the pains of hell?
[4590] 9. The algebraic theology of Craig. [4591] What is one to think of this?
[4592] 10. Is it true that the infant Saint-Roch refused suck on Wednesdays and Fridays?
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[4593] 11. What is one to think of the excommunication of vermin in the sixteenth century?
[4594] 12. Is one to approve of the Italian cobbler Lovat who, having cut off his testicles, crucified himself.
[4595] 13. What was God doing with himself before the creation?
[4596] 14. Might not the beatific vision become a source of boredom, in the long run?
[4597] 15. Is it true that Judas' torments are suspended on Saturdays?
[4598] 16. What if the mass for the dead were read over the living?
[4599] And I recited the pretty quietist Pater, Our Father who art no more in heaven than on earth or in hell, I neither want nor desire that they name be hallowed, thou knowest best what suits thee.
[4600] Etc.
[4601] The middle and the end are very pretty.
[4602] It was in this frivolous and charming world that I took refuge, when my cup ran over.
[4603] But I asked myself other questions concerning me perhaps more closely. [4604] As for example.
[4605] 1. Why had I not borrowed a few shillings from Gaber?
[4606] 2. Why had I obeyed the order to go home?
[4607] 3. What had become of Molloy?
[4608] 4. Same question for me.
[4609] 5. What would become of me?
[4610] 6. Same questions for my son.
[4611] 7. Was his mother in heaven?
[4612] 8. Same question for my mother.
[4613] 9. Would I go to heaven?
[4614] 10. Would we all meet again in heaven one day, I, my mother, my son, his mother, Youdi, Gaber, Molloy, his mother, Yerk, Murphy, Watt, Camier and the rest?
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[4615] 11. What had become of my hens, my bees? [4616] Was my grey hen still living?
[4617] 12. Zulu, the Elsner sisters, were they still living?
[4618] 143. Was Youdi's business address still 8, Acacia Square?
[4619] What if I wrote to him?
[4620] What if I went to see him?
[4621] I would explain to him.
[4622] What would I explain to him?
[4623] I would crave his forgiveness.
[4624] Forgiveness for what?
[4625] 154. Was not the winter exceptionally severe?
[4626] 15. How long had I gone now without either confession or communion?
[4627] 16. What was the name of the martyr who, being in prison, loaded with chains, covered with wounds and vermin, unable to stir, celebrated the consecration on his stomach and gave himself absolution?
[4628] 17. What would I do until my death? [4629] Was there no means of hastening this, without falling into a state of sin?
[4630] But before I launch my body properly so-called across these icy, then, with the thaw, muddy solitudes, I wish to say that I often thought of my bees, more often than of my hens, and God knows I thought often of my hens.
[4631] And I thought above all of their dance, for my bees danced, oh not as men dance, to amuse themselves, but in a different way.
[4632] I alone of all mankind knew this, to the best of my belief.
[4633] I had investigated this phenomenon very fully.
[4634] The dance was best to be observed among the [⁁]bees returning to the hive, laden more or less with nectar, and it involved a great variety of figures and rhythms.
[4635] These evolutions I finally interpreted as a system of signals by means of which the incoming bees, satisfied or dissatisfied with their plunder, informed the outgoing companions bees in what direction to go, and in what not to go.
[4636] But the outgoing bees danced too.
[4637] It was no doubt their way of saying, I understand, or, Don't worry about me.
[4638] But away from the hive, and busily at work, the bees did not dance.
[4639] Here their watchword seemed to be, Every man for
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[4639] himself, assuming bees to be capable of such notions.
[4640] The most striking feature of the dance was its very complicated figures, traced in flight, and I had classified a great number of these, with their probable meanings.
[4641] But there was also the question of the hum, so various in tone in the vicinity of the hive that this could harldly be an effect of chance.
[4642] I first concluded that each figure was reinforced by means of a hum peculiar to it.
[4643] But I was forced to abandon this agreeable hypothesis.
[4644] For I saw the same figure (at least what I called the same figure) accompanied by very diffierent hums.
[4645] So that I said, The purpose of the hum is not to emphasize the dance, but on the contrary to vary it.
[4646] And the same figure exactly differs in meaning according to the hum that goes with it.
[4647] And I had collected and classified a great number of observations on this subject, with gratifying results.
[4648] But there was to be considered not only the figure and the hum, but also the height at which the figure was executed.
[4649] And I acquired the conviction that the selfsame figure, accompanied by the selfsame hum, did not mean at all the same thing at twelve feet from the ground as it did at six.
[4650] For the bees did not dance at any level, haphazard, but there were three or four levels, always the same, at which they danced.
[4651] And if I were to tell you what these levels were, and what the relations between them, for I had measured them with care, you would not believe me.
[4652] And it this is not the moment to jeopardize my credit.
[4653] Sometimes you would think I was writing for the public.
[4654] And in spite of all the pains I had lavished on these problems, I was more than ever stupefied by the complexity of this innumerable dance, involving doubtless other determinants of which I had not the slightest idea.
[4655] And I said, with rapture, Here is something I can study all my life, and never understand.
[4656] too [₰][₰] And all during this long journey home, when I racked my mind for a little joy in store, the thought of my bees and their dance was the nearest
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[4656] thing to comfort.
[4657] For I was still eager for my little joy, from time to time!
[4658] And I admitted with a[₰] good grace the possibility that this dance was after all no better than the dances of the people of the West, frivolous and meaningless.
[4659] But for me, sitting near my sundrenched hives, it would always be a noble thing to contemplate, too noble ever to be sullied by the cogitations of a man like me, exiled in his manhood.
[4660] And I would never do my bees the wrong I had done my God, to whom I had been taught to ascribe my angers, fears, desires, and even my body.
[4661] I have spoken of a voice giving me orders, or rather advice. [4662] It was on the way home I heard it for the first time. [4663] I paid no attention to it.
[4664] Physically speaking it seemed to me I was now becoming rapidly unrecognizable.
[4665] And when I passed my hands over my face, in a characteristic and now more than ever pardonable gesture, the face my hands felt was not my face any more, and the hands my face felt were my hands no longer.
[4666] And yet the gist of the sensation was the same as in the far-off days when I was well-shaven and perfumed and proud of my intellectual's soft white hands.
[4667] And this belly I did not know remained my belly, my old belly, thanks to I know not what intuition.
[4668] And to tell the truth I not only knew who I was, but I had a sharper and clearer sense of my identity than ever before, in spite of its deep lesions and the wounds with which it was covered.
[4669] And from this point of view I was less fortunate than my other acquaintances.
[4670] I am sorry if this last pharase is not so happy as it might be.
[4671] It deserved, who knows, to be without ambiguity.
[4672] Then there are the clothes that cleave so close to the body and are so to speak inseparable from it, in time of peace. [4673] Yes, I have always been very sensitive to clothing, though not in the least a dandy. [4674] I had not to complain of mine, tough and of good cut. [4675] I was of course inadequately covered, but whose fault was that? [4676] And I had to part with